Some of these can work pretty well in this browser emulator for people that want to see it demo'd:
BASIC Computer Games
41–50 of 124 posts
Re: BASIC Computer Games
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, and the only reason why not is because people would want/expect to be able to just download the source code and run it without typing it in. But there's absolutely zero reason why this couldn't be replicated with pygame, nodejs or even just a modern BASIC interpreter/compiler.
Not just that we expect to, we can. Back in the day you could download them as well, but it costs a lot of money: someone had to pay for the computer and phone line and then one computer per phone line was common. It also took a long time to download files at 300 baud, and often you were paying long distance rates to the phone company (which was far more expensive than long distance rates now despite inflation). Most…
I'm guessing where you live radio stations / TV shows didn't air the data noise of BASIC code like they sometimes did in the UK?
You could record it straight onto your audio cassette (like you would record any song on the radio) then play that on your BBC Micro.
It was cheap, accessible and effectively the analogue equivolent of downloading.
Re: BASIC Computer Games
#43Dawww. I had this book when it came out and used to type the programs into my Commodore PET by hand! Boy does this bring back memories.
I had it too, but typed them into my Atari 800 - after which I'd save it to cassette tape.
Re: BASIC Computer Games
#44Are there any books of this kind for modern languages?
Not really in terms of just listings of code, but there are plenty of 'Learn Language X Through Games' type of books like 'Land of Lisp' or 'Automate the Boring Stuff in Python' that have the same feel.
Re: BASIC Computer Games
#45The interesting podcast "They Create Worlds" recently had an episode on this topic, it's worth a listen: https://tcwpodcast.podbean.com/e/computer-game-basics/ Growing up I had a Commodore 64 and for some reason came into possession of another of David Ahl's books ("More Computer Games" I think it was called). It contained Eliza as one of the listings and it was a program that fascinated me so much I ended up creatin…
Horribly nested BASIC is just what you did before you did it better.
On the Commodore 64, it was the only option. It had minimal support for a thing it called a "subroutine", but what it really was was a GOTO that pushed the source on to the stack and could be RETURN'd to that source. In particular, no concept of return value, no concept of parameters; everything's global. Modification of global values prior to the "call" is the argument passing, and modification of global values is the "return".
Commodore 64 BASIC, and 8-bit BASIC in general, was fully in the paradigm that Dijkstra was referring to when he wrote Goto Considered Harmful. (Not exclusively, of course.)
Re: BASIC Computer Games
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not just that we expect to, we can. Back in the day you could download them as well, but it costs a lot of money: someone had to pay for the computer and phone line and then one computer per phone line was common. It also took a long time to download files at 300 baud, and often you were paying long distance rates to the phone company (which was far more expensive than long distance rates now despite inflation). Most…
I'm guessing where you live radio stations / TV shows didn't air the data noise of BASIC code like they sometimes did in the UK? You could record it straight onto your audio cassette (like you would record any song on the radio) then play that on your BBC Micro. It was cheap, accessible and effectively the analogue equivolent of downloading.
I never heard of that until much latter. There wasn't a dominate computer platform: as a kid I knew people with Apple II, C64, Atari, or TI. They were not compatible in general, so it doesn't really make sense to air such things. Even assuming the recording would work, my memory of cassette systems is they rarely worked. I typically saved everything to 3 different tapes to have a hope of reading back correctly eventually.
Re: BASIC Computer Games
#47Readers in the UK or Commonwealth might be more familiar with the Usborne series of books for 8 bit computers. The publisher has made them available from their website[0]. Here is a series of modern reviews from a friend of mine[1]. My favorite when I was a kid was the one that taught assembly language to pre-teens. I still think of cartoon robots putting notes into boxes whenever I assign something to a variable. [0…
Thank you for that nostalgia trip!
Computer Battlegames and Computer Spacegames were much loved in my youth. I wish I had seen some of the other books in the programming series from Usborne.
I remember my dad being super frustrated with me when I was very young. He was on such a different level (chip/board designer) that everything was so effortless to him, and he had serious trouble relating to anyone "beneath" him. It only got worse when he left when I was about 9. I always had trouble self-motivating, and it would hurt like hell when he'd show up out of the blue and express disappointment that I wasn't writing assembly yet or building my own circuits.
But the Usborne stuff, and the spectrum/vic20 games I played around that time, are treasured memories. Thank you for reminding me :)
Re: BASIC Computer Games
#48Back in the 90s I learned a lot from the Prodigy QBasic community. There were some really cool games that people contributed, they have to be out there on the web somewhere.
Re: BASIC Computer Games
#49BASIC was the best. Very simple language that's very accessible. In high school, we programmed Lego robots using BASIC to follow a black line.
Re: BASIC Computer Games
#50Wow, I had this exact book and I believe I typed every last program into my Commodore 64. Including the (to me) massive Super Star Trek game, which I did over the course of several evenings. Ended up porting that one to the PC as a way to learn Pascal. What a trip down memory lane.